Material handling vehicles are widely used in and around warehouses, manufacturing facilities, stores and the like. Vehicle downtime can be particularly detrimental to efficiency and productivity. Material handling vehicles may need to be removed from service due to various circumstances, such as malfunctioning tiller head operator controls, a faulty vehicle controller or a discharged or defective battery.
In prior art material handling vehicles, whether electric or gas powered, it is common to have tiller head operator controls, vehicle controllers and batteries fixedly mounted to the vehicles in a manner that requires taking the vehicles out of service to undergo time consuming disassembly and repair. For example, when a standard battery in a prior art vehicle is discharged or defective, the vehicle must be shut down and taken out of service. It can take significant time to undergo charging and to achieve a fully charged battery, or to remove body panels or covers that encase the battery within the vehicle, and to dismount, disconnect the cables or wiring and remove the standard battery. Then, the process must be reversed to install the recharged battery or a replacement battery. Even in the case of a vehicle having a connector that can be used for recharging a battery that remains connected to the vehicle, whether via connection to an onboard charger or a separate charger, while the battery itself would not need to be removed to recharge during a common downtime, such as overnight, the vehicle still must be taken out of service to recharge the battery. Thus, if a battery is discharged during a work shift, the vehicle must be sidelined.
Issues can arise with respect to operator controls in a tiller head or with respect to a vehicle controller, which similarly would require significant disruption of use of the material handling vehicle. The vehicle would need to be taken out of service for what may be very time consuming disassembly of a tiller head of a handle or removal of body panels to access, disconnect and remove a controller for service or maintenance operations. This may result in a significant reduction in productivity, due to the vehicle downtime needed to repair the vehicle and put it back in service.